


Hold infinity

by phasespace



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: M/M, Pining, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 05:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phasespace/pseuds/phasespace
Summary: Dante and Vergil's history, told by the palm of their hands.





	Hold infinity

**Author's Note:**

> Canon divergence in this fic: Dante achieves DT before Temen-ni-gru.

I.

Vergil is swinging on his plastic horse in contemplative silence, having just come out of reading with stiff muscles and sore eyes. It’s a slow spring day; the kind where if he isn’t careful, he’ll find himself saddled with lethargy, sticky and persistent.

From above him comes a sound that could be described as a squeal. It is followed by the crack of branches under stress, and Vergil looks up just in time to catch the sight of his brother breaking his fall against a lower rung of the tree, hands scrabbling against it for a wild second until he finds purchase to lithely swing himself up. 

Vergil wrinkles his nose. Dante will come out of it with splinters, he knows; and he will have to pull them out for him again, because his brother is far too impatient to be of any good at it.

Dante notices his stare. He rolls out a sloppy smile as if he’d meant to fall all along.

“I thought you’d be in by now,” Vergil drawls, “to watch your stupid show.”

They are ignoring the fact that Dante is grounded after a series of rainy days that saw him cut the heads off all the roses from their gardens. Predictably, aggravatingly, such enforcements mean nothing to his little brother.

The flowers had been special, too— Vergil had watched with quiet interest as Eva pollinated them with care, her mind a soothing stream of consciousness as she talked about genes and phenotypes and the dominant and recessive subtypes. He hadn’t understood everything, but that didn’t matter— such unspoken challenges were of great delight to him.

“Nah,” Dante replies brightly. “I’d rather be watching you.” 

Vergil narrows his eyes. “Really.”

“Yeah. You get this dumb look on your face when you’re thinking.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“At least it’s not half as stupid as the look you get when you’re perambulating around the gardens.”

Dante gives him a blank look at that— he doesn’t know what the word means, and Vergil’s banking on the fact that he won’t admit it; because he’s _ almost, _ but not quite _ — _sure either.

Dante flips his hair. “Whatever.”

_ Score for Vergil_, he thinks. Dante had always accepted his dry aphorisms without question, and it’s not as if he delights in taking advantage of his trust; it’s just that with his twin always fighting dirty during their scrapes, it’s only fair he has an advantage in something else. 

It leaves him wondering how long it will take for that to change— to wake up one day and find that Dante’s eyes are no longer filled with wonder— or worse, to find them fixated on something else, something that isn’t him. The thought sits far too uncomfortable in his gut. He continues to swing on his horse.

“Oh, I know— you’re thinking of when to tell Mom.”

Vergil fixes what he assumes to be a cool gaze on his brother. “Tell what.”

“Well,” Dante says, slowly as if he were talking to an infant, “only way she’d know I was here is if you told her, right?” 

Without waiting for an answer, Dante crouches and tenses his muscles. Vergil snaps his eyes into focus, for he knows what is about to happen.

Dante kicks off the branch and backflips into the air. It would have made for an impressive stunt, save for the landing— a feat he had been stumbling on for quite some time now. Vergil is already on his feet, grabbing Dante by his arm and wrenching him back into balance with more force than necessary. 

Dante laughs in response and punches him on the shoulder hard enough to bruise. It is quick to devolve into a fight, of the kind they relish with fists and hair pulling and biting; and when they are lying on the grass sore and spent after their impromptu scuffle, Vergil asks:

“Do you really think that’s something I would do?” 

Dante pauses from his little game of tearing great chunks of grass out from the dirt. “No,” he says, after a beat of silence. For all of his nonchalance, he is surprisingly intuitive in judging the weight behind words, even in the ones left unspoken.

Vergil’s nod feels heavy— but even Dante couldn’t know that. “Show me your hand,” he says.

Dante acquiesces. Vergil clicks his tongue at the minuscule tears in the soft flesh of his palm from the splinters. 

“Doesn’t hurt,” Dante offers.

“I’m sure.”

He doesn’t say more than that, since there is no need to. The cuts heal themselves once the offending objects are removed, and Vergil watches it happen each time with an attention to detail that borders on fascination.

The sun is blistering hot on the crown of his head by the time he’s finished. He pokes and prods at the skin until he’s sure he’s removed all of them.

“Ouch! Cut it out, Verge.” 

The complaint is half-hearted. Dante’s face is lax, close to dozing off.

“Missed one,” Vergil suppresses a smirk. “There.” 

Vergil angles the palm to the light and inspects his handiwork. He notices how the ends of Dante’s fingers have become calloused from practicing the guitar. The rest is flawless, bereft of any scars or tears.

“Now all you gotta do is kiss it better.”

Vergil snorts. The look on Dante’s face is all mischief, gleeful under self-perceived notions of wit. Dante expects him to be embarrassed by the notion, perhaps; maybe he wants to see him draw away in indignation. 

Vergil knows the perfect counter. He draws the palm up to his lips and plants a kiss.

When he looks up, he sees that Dante does not appear to be shocked by this. In fact, his brother drags out a slow, insouciant smile. “Gee, thanks,” he says, “you’re the best.”

That’s when Vergil realises that he has miscalculated terribly. Not liking how the tips of his ears burn, he pulls his hands away and lifts himself up. “I’m going back to read.”

“Already?” Dante scrambles up, a little less elegantly on his part. “You gotta race me back, then— loser’s stuck on the TV with me.”

Vergil glares. He opens his mouth as if to speak, then uses the distraction to shove Dante back into the grass with no small amount of vindictive viciousness. He beats Dante in their race back home, leaving him free to spend the remaining hours of daylight folded in the library, reading; and after a while, he will pause to watch the light outside the windows dim, and not for the first time, he will wonder on the heavy feeling the sight brings him.

II.

Vergil doesn’t usually take to working under a time limit; but he isn’t in the mood to deal with authority, and keeps no promises to play nice. The Yamato sings through the air and forms a graceful arc over his head before it is plunged through the body of a toppled ATM. As he slices through the casing, he registers and boxes away a sensation— a strange numbness in the hands, as if they don’t quite belong to his body.

It had been like this ever since he’d watched his house burn away to nothing but ashes. The image is surreal; something which could only belong to some twilight realm, a special corner of purgatory within which his mind and body had been residing for much of his teenage years.

_ Not much longer now_, Vergil reminds himself. He pushes a humourless smile onto his lips.

“Using the Yamato for petty crime? Nice one, bro. Next thing I know, you’ll be using it to slice up pizza.”

The voice and ensuing laugh grates against his nerves like rusted steel against stone. Vergil lets the quip slide in favour of concentrating on the current task at hand. He slides his fingers through the cut and grips the metal’s edge, peeling back the chassis as easily as if it were made of paper. Leaning in, his hand closes around cash.

“Take it,” he says.

The wad of cash is thrown, hits Dante on his chest, and lands unceremoniously by his feet.

“Why, you planning on leaving?” Dante crosses his arms. He pointedly ignores the money. “That’s too bad. Our eighteenth is just around the corner, too.”

“Well, Dante,” says Vergil, pulling out the rest of the cash and putting them in a neat pile. “I’d praise you on your powers of deduction, save for the fact that you did paw through my belongings just this morning.”

He suspects that Dante will not take the money, and this annoys him more than he cares to admit; not at Dante, but at himself, for having went ahead with such a pointless endeavour in the first place. “You really are no better than a city rat.”

He hears it first, then sees it second; a flash of steel aimed at his throat.

Vergil deflects it with a flick of his wrist. Dante is quick to recover, bouncing back with a sharp lunge. It locks them in a bind for a second, Dante’s breath coming in hot puffs that trickle unpleasant against his face.

“Quit shutting me out if it bothers you so much,” snarls Dante.

“You?” Vergil pulls back and prepares himself for a second attack— but it doesn’t come. He twirls the Yamato against the sudden rush of overdrawn nerves and raises a brow. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The sarcasm falls on deaf ears; Dante has lost his stance. His sword hangs useless by his side. “Oh,” he says simply.

_ Oh. _This gives Vergil some pause— it lacks the heat that had suffused his brother’s tone just moments ago. It is carefully blank, a word that he had gone through the effort of putting under wraps. That’s when it clicks together— the hunched shoulders, the heavy breathing, the narrowed eyes.

“I get it,” Dante says, strutting up to him until their chests near touch, his expression growing more thunderous by the second, “too busy getting your dick wet to celebrate our eighteenth? Is that it?”

That almost startles a laugh out of Vergil; a testament to how wired up his nerves are. _ Of course _, he thinks. His demon must have smelt it off him, the cloying perfume his human had used.

“With the way you’ve phrased it, one would almost think you were jealous.”

Dante flinches back, circles him; looking at him as if he were studying a stranger. Vergil gladly meets his stare, dragging his gaze against his brother’s body in a manner that’s meant to depreciate, to bring into scrutiny his shredded coat, the unruly scruff of his hair, his chest so recklessly exposed to the night’s elements.

He stumbles, however, as he knew he would— for his eyes eventually hone in on the sinuous muscle, shifting against each other in a fine braid that speaks of his prowess. The lingering smell of his exertion is intoxicating; the proud swing of his gait even more so. It’s enough to make the demon in him purr, stirring volatile against the chemical soup wrought by teenagehood.

Shame. If he had the time, he would very much like to have found if Dante felt the same.

There’s a shift in Dante’s footing, then his eyes swell to a dangerous black. Vergil braces himself; and Dante is on him again with renewed vigour, the clash of Rebellion against Yamato drawing out a clean, unadulterated note. Pressed against him like this, his vision is flooded by the steel-blue of his brother’s eyes, senses awash with his haggard breathing and the twist of his snarl. How exquisite he looks, complex sentiments and raw emotion twisting his features into passion, solidified.

“It’s not like you,” Dante says. Vergil’s arm shudders as he braces against Dante’s relentless push.

“That isn’t for you to say.”

He wonders what Dante would say, had he known that he alone had been responsible for the awakening of a beast in Vergil, the kind he wouldn’t find in the manuscripts and books that keep him up until dawn.

It’s tempting— but Vergil keeps his mouth shut. He angles his foot, bends his knees. Dante’s energy pours into him, and like a spring, he takes it in— relaxes his muscles enough to feel it flex under Dante’s efforts, letting it flow over his frame, power lacing over power. He holds it, waits, then— finally, uncompresses; redirecting Dante’s momentum, pushing outwards with enough force to send the Rebellion spinning out of the man’s hands.

Dante staggers backwards. His eyes are wide with surprise, much to Vergil’s deep satisfaction.

He steps through and seizes the advantage. A leg is flung out to sweep Dante off his feet, while a hand is extended to pluck Rebellion out of the air. In that instance frozen in time, he allows a moment of indulgence to appreciate the sword’s weight and balance in his hands. It is undeniably crude; and so achingly raw.

He twirls it in his hands and rams it forward. The blade slides between Dante’s ribs with obscene ease.

“Against everything that’s happened,” he says, and his dry words are punctuated by a cry from Dante, “here you are, orbiting around me like a bastard moon.”

When Dante opens his mouth in an effort to form words, Vergil is struck by a sudden compulsion to twist the blade. There are many things that a pair of twins may be expected to know of each other in intimate detail— but somehow, he suspects that knowing the give of Dante’s body against metal is something quite out of the books.

“Get a hold of yourself, brother. Or _ Tony Redgrave_, should I say,” the name is spat through gritted teeth. “Pack a bag. Take the money. Leave.”

Dante’s face is swept by pain and fury until it is near unrecognisable. Amidst the dark broiling of emotions that he cannot find the names for, Vergil tightens his grip on the Rebellion. He decides that he will twist the blade after all.

He turns his wrist— and what rides through his body is something akin to flicking on a switch that short circuits on his unsuspecting fingers. Raw energy sweeps through him, swiftly answered by his demon; waves of infernal energy boiling under skin, clawing against the cage of his mind to meet the offender.

Vergil swallows back a roar. He forces his eyes open. The vision he sees is of power, plasma and lightning rolling over Dante’s body bright enough to sear through his retina, so that he may see the outline of the writhing figure behind closed eyelids for several nights to come— and in those first few unfettered seconds, the demonic and mundane constituents of his body come together to be unified by a single, resounding thought.

Beautiful.

Maroon plates of hardened chitin, glittering sleek against the moonlight. His eyes travel up to the crown of Dante’s head and the proud set of horns that sprout from it. There’s a discordant sound of claws against steel as Dante’s hands scrabble against the Rebellion, no doubt in a frenzied act wrought by the dizzying spiral of his trigger.

Vergil lets go of the sword and peels Dante’s hands away, revealing cuts; and the blood is quick to spill sticky warm onto his own skin. Dante coughs out a gasp, is rocked by a spasm— then just as suddenly, goes limp and heavy against his hold.

The ensuing silence is jarring. Vergil is mildly amused by the realisation that his brother has once again succeeded in thoroughly derailing his mind away from his carefully set plans. His teenage years had been consumed by his studies which had accumulated to his ultimate triumph, the unlocking of his devil trigger. All Dante had needed, on the other hand, was extraordinary luck; of which the man had in spades.

In the end, Vergil sees it as nothing more than proof of his own failings. He supposes it’s why he cannot truly hate his brother.

He turns the hand over. The clawed digits are slowly unfurled to reveal the fleshy palm; an island of tender skin flanked by plates meant to protect, a barrier tempered by nothing less than Hell.

In it he sees weakness; a symbol of their humanity that shines stubborn even in their devil forms. Vergil brings the too-warm skin to his lips and kisses his goodbyes. One for his brother, one for himself.

The final kiss is dedicated to Eva.

III.

By some indistinct location, at some unrecorded hour, a mirror breaks.

_ Look at you. Look at what you have become. A weapon used for killing. A vile and reprehensible thing. _

The taste of copper is ever-present. Vergil has lost his arm’s extension, his Yamato. The rest will follow, and soon he will be left with nothing.

_ Allow yourself to find salvation through me, for I am the hand that pulls the trigger. _

No— that’s not quite true, is it? Vergil unclenches his fists with some effort. The gauges left by his fingernails slowly stitch together to form pink, newly-born skin, and he focuses his eyes on the folds of his hands. He has read extensively on biological twins, of course, and he knows that not even genetically identical twins share the same fingerprints.

_ How fortunate that a son of Sparda such as you would be given the opportunity to serve such divine purpose. _

It is his body’s trace of every small push that would have two bodies born under identical circumstances set upon ever diverging paths. 

_ Reborn by my hand, I name you— _

This is just as well. He would like to think that he had taken a part of Dante with him, and Dante, his. Vergil brings his shaking hands up to his lips, and—

IV.

Midnight finds Vergil breathing into the musty pillowcase of a guest room bed, his curled fingers twitching by his ribs to tap out a restless rhythm. Keeping his thoughts empty proves to be a challenge. Much like the random motions of particles in water, sparks alight in his mind here and there, bringing to light memories he’d rather leave alone. Like photographs viewed through a slide projector, stills plucked from a lost film. Static, distorted, not his.

Insanity, to persist on a lost cause. 

Vergil sits up. The fabric folds and whispers around him. He pulls the Yamato from underneath the pillow and props her against a bedside table. He makes the bed, taking care to snap away the folds and tidy the corners. The silken texture is foreign against his fingers which are not as calloused as they should be. His eyes, too, feel foreign, looking at the world with an intensity that would have escaped his previous selves.

He will learn to reclaim them, eventually. For now, Vergil folds his hands back and paces the perimeter of the room. He runs a finger through the thin sheen of dust by the windowsill, then picks up an upturned book. _ The Tempest_. During a humid summer day, he’d decreed that he would play Prospero and goaded Dante into playing Ariel, though Dante had a habit of twisting his lines when subservience didn’t suit him. Vergil had gotten so frustrated that he didn’t talk to him for a day. _ Anyway_, they’d agreed under the secrecy of blankets, _ it’s a boring play_. Vergil carefully smoothes out the crumpled pages and puts it back in its rightful place.

He moves to inspect the rest of the books when something at the back of his mind shifts. Amidst the distant and faint sound of a body in sleep, Vergil listens as the breathing misses a beat, is held, then dragged out as a sigh. He takes a step forward, then another, until he is but a hair’s breadth away from the door. He hears the creak of hinges neglected of oil, then holds himself to supernatural stillness when the floorboards adjacent to his room shudder underneath heavy footfalls. 

Dante swings past his room and makes for the stairs. Hummed beneath the man’s breath is a tune Vergil recognises, some nameless classic that had often filled the manor just before dinner.

Vergil breathes out. A small knot in his stomach loosens, if somewhat inexplicably.

He counts out a minute, then another. He phases through his own door; rolls his footfalls out of habit, avoids treading on any loose floorboards. Not that his caution would have mattered. If Dante’s pull is anything to go by, his demonic signature should be a near tangible thing by now. Dante doesn’t even need to look back to guess at his arrival.

“Well, well, so it _ is _true what they say— the devil never sleeps.”

He is slumped by the kitchen table with a mug in hand, illuminated pale under a wane light. His crumpled shirt, loose boxers and tousled hair completes the picture of artful disarray.

“They say that the devil doesn’t take kindly to idiocy, either.”

Vergil passes a scathing eye over the taped posters torn from magazines, sweeps through the layer of dust over discarded pans and pots, and settles over the mug in Dante’s hand in sharp inquiry.

“Warm milk,” says Dante, picking up on it. “It’s supposed to help with sleep— but don’t take my word on that. Gives me something to do, at least.” He sits straighter and motions towards the fridge behind him. “I can make one for you, if you’d like.”

As he pulls a seat next to Dante, Vergil thinks it’s just as well that it hadn’t been a mug of rum. Clearing out the office of empty bottles had been enough. “And watch you heat it up in the microwave like a heathen. Pass.”

“What does it matter? You can’t even taste the difference.”

“Not everybody can be as uncultured as you, Dante.”

Dante loudly yawns around his mug. “Growing up on the Romantics doesn’t give you snob rights, Vergil. You act the part of an erudite nerd, but you can’t fool me— you’re just as much of a dumbass as I am.”

Vergil suppresses his sympathy yawn. “Erudite,” he mutters. “Which penny magazine did you pull that from.”

“Oh, take a pick,” says Dante, “any dumb magazine that’s worth reading over William Blake.”

Vergil can almost hear it, Dante’s whispered _ score_. 

“Resorting to invoking childhood interests, I see. Well done, Dante.” 

He glares over Dante’s too-sharp smile, but it doesn’t last long— Dante’s expression dissolves with an incredulous shake of his head, his body moving with silent laughter.

Vergil doesn’t ask him about it. He knows the surreal feeling just as well. They’ve been living under the same roof for three days now; and going by his premonitions, it’s three days too many. He’s become dangerously comfortable with the particular kind of silence that comes from an occupied room with a body in slumber. The lingering warmth of his presence is striking, too— whether in the kitchen from heated leftovers, or from a misted shower in the bathroom, or just the simple press of his body’s heat.

Now that Vergil’s found it, he is starting to understand the lengths at which he will go to keep it. But much like the book, the amulet, and the Yamato, it is Dante alone who can take it from him; everything he holds most dear.

His teenage self would have been incensed, should he have known; the kind of power Dante’s held over him, made all the more absolute by his own need to prove otherwise. The thought gives him a wry smile.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

Dante is staring.

“Keep it. You’ll need it for the rent.”

Dante snorts. “You’re such a tool,” he says amiably. He stretches, absentmindedly scratches at his stomach, then says, “I called Lady the other day. Turns out, she’s setting up a new business with Nico.”

Vergil hums. The names are familiar but the memories regarding them are blurred in part due to V’s fear-ridden mind. “Looking to capitalise on the new wave of bounty hunters in the wake of the Qliphoth, I would imagine.”

“Yep, right on the money,” says Dante. “I asked her if she was sure about it—selling firearms. Demon hunting’s no joke, and a new, shiny gun isn’t gonna change that. And she told me—_ it’s not my business how some idiot with an over-inflated ego loses his leg.” _

“The resemblance of said _ idiot _to someone I know is striking,” says Vergil. “Do pass on my well-wishes for their business, won’t you?”

Dante kicks him from underneath the table. “Asshole.” 

Vergil watches as his brother goes silent and finishes off his beverage. 

“Anyway,” Dante says. A shift overcomes him— a minute sag of the shoulders and a deepening in tone, perhaps even unbeknownst to the man. “World’s moving on. The ladies are off with a new business, and Nero’s got his own family to take care of.” Dante stares at the mug as if to find enlightenment from within it. “Feels strange, I guess.”

Vergil wouldn’t know, having never had a life to compare against others in the first place. Realising the rhythmic tapping is from his own fingers against wood, he gathers his hands and folds them on his lap.

“There is nothing keeping you here.”

“Huh?”

“You talk as if your life is at a standstill. Perhaps what you require is a change of scenery, a means to break worn habits. Redgrave is beyond repair, in any case.”

Dante’s eyes are hard, unreadable. How unlike the brother he once knew, whose eyes alone told you when he’d been hurt, and by how much.

“If this is just your way of saying you want a nice cottage with a vineyard somewhere south of France, tell me. I’m sure we can manage something.”

Vergil pauses. If he’s expected an answer, that wasn’t it. “No, Dante.” 

He searches for an appropriate response; but a second stretches into another. This is largely due to a thought which wonders just how much his brother has changed. “I am content to stay, if you are,” he settles on.

“Pfft, yeah,” Dante punctuates his point with a cheek-numbing grin, and this time— its intention is clear. “Obviously.”

The smile keeps for a moment; tender and fragile under harsh fluorescence. It takes all of Vergil’s self control not to lean away from it, enduring the silence until he can bear it no longer. 

He gets up. Dante starts in his chair. 

“Don’t let me keep you, Dante.”

Dante blinks. “Oh, okay. Sure.” He shoots a two-fingered salute, smile frozen. “See you in the morning, I guess.”

Vergil makes his way into the guest room. He is blanketed by the kind of absolute silence that he had once coveted but now dreads; the kind of silence only found at midnight and in places of worship. His thumb traces around the outer edges of his palm all the while, back and forth, back and forth.

V.

There are days when Vergil is so lost in his own head that he does not register Dante’s approach until it is too late. It is usually on these days that he will leave the confines of the office, only to return with the smell of ozone crackling off his fingertips and gore congealing on his coat. Sometimes he will keep a tight hold on the Yamato for hours, when the tremors aren’t as quick to leave his system.

Dante does not ask him about it, and Vergil keeps to his own unspoken promise, too: he makes sure to tell his little brother when he is going out, and for how long. Even when drenched in blood-lust and thinly veiled grief, he always returns half an hour earlier than his promised time.

If he’s ever done something right in his life, it’s in never breaking his word.

“There he is,” says Dante. He shuffles from his not-rest, cranes his neck to peer at him from underneath his magazine.

_ There it is_, Vergil thinks in turn. That brilliant smile of his, a devil’s weapon in its own right.

He turns and makes for the shower, but something catches his eye.

It is the sorry silhouette carved by a decrepit sofa, faded and collapsing under its own weight. It’s the first thing that affronts his eyes every time he comes back from one of his hunts. The office has no lack of perfectly functional couches— it is just one of the many relics from the past that Dante is so fond of keeping.

Vergil doesn’t know whether it’s from the residue frustration of a particularly annoying empusa nest, but he finds himself saying in a tone of voice that brooks no argument:

“We are not putting this off for any longer. The couch is going.”

Dante gingerly props his feet off the table, his expression tuned to picture-perfect innocence. “Huh?”

“I expect you to be ready to dispose of it by the time I’m done with my shower.”

“Vergil—”

Vergil does not hear the rest of it, and he doesn’t think about it when he showers, intent on scraping the blood out of his fingernails under searing heat. By the time he’s done, most of his bad mood had been scoured away; but the sight of the couch still proves to be a source of mild annoyance. Dante is already waiting for him, no doubt holding onto an argument.

Vergil pays him no mind. He lengthens his stride to overtake him.

“Hey, no— listen to me,” Dante picks up his own pace to tag by his heel, “this baby’s been rocking with me ever since this shop was just another nameless dump. And that’s why—“

“Your aptitude for personifying inanimate objects is admirable,” Vergil cuts through, “if ultimately useless. It’s going, Dante.”

“I thought we’d agreed that this refurbishment shit would be a collaborative effort— hey!” Dante flings out a hand when Vergil kicks its side with more force than perhaps considered polite, “see, that’s what I’m talking about. Property damage is _ not _collaborative.”

“In light of your incapability for rational thought, I am taking executive action. This is a biohazard.” Vergil’s kick dislodges pizza crumbs; the couch’s frame lets out an ominous creak, and decades-old dust fumes out of the offending object. Vergil curls his lip. “Disgusting.”

“Wrong,” Dante bounds around him and swings himself onto the couch, draping himself over it in a protective manner. “_You’re _a biohazard. What’s this couch ever do to you?”

The absurdity of it renders Vergil momentarily speechless, and he suppresses the overwhelming urge to punch away the self-satisfied smirk that blossoms on Dante’s face. “Kindly shut up and give me a hand, little brother.”

Dante doesn’t budge. He stretches himself out, cat-like, and the couch eagerly swallows his form. The action hitches up his shirt just enough for a pale slither of skin to show above his jeans, and Vergil’s eyes hone in on it before he can catch himself.

He snaps his eyes away, regroups. It’s a childish act with a simple solution. All he needs to do is walk away.

Yet, something stays his legs. Seeing Dante, the utter_ imbecile_— between the sly shine of teeth between lips, the careless splay of his fringe, and his eyes folded in mirth—

Vergil _ wants_.

It drives his hands forward to jab at Dante’s side, his fingernails digging mercilessly into his skin— and Dante’s eyes widen; his mouth forms a perfect ‘O’— and from it comes a peal of laughter, bright and shivering against the boarded-up darkness of their office.

“Oh, fuck off—” Dante wriggles like an eel and flings out a leg that hits Vergil’s ribs, hard and bruising.

He retaliates by trying to lift Dante off the couch, but Dante already has hands in his hair, and he cannot drop him to the floor without having a handful of it ripped off. He gives a sharp jab to his solar plexus with an elbow instead, causing Dante to wheeze out the air in his lungs. “If I have to take you alongside the couch to see it gone,” Vergil growls, triumphant, “I will.” 

“Go ahead; I’ll bring you with me,” Dante snarls in kind, voice hoarse, “and I’ll be doing you a favour, cause I’ll put you where you really belong— with the garbage.”

They wrestle, hair awry, hands bunching up fabric, breathless and without care in a way they haven’t been since they were kids. Vergil realises at some point that the low rumble of a laugh he hears isn’t Dante’s— it’s_ his_.

In the end, it is to his admittedly petty satisfaction when he has Dante concede after breathing into the disgusting fabric for too long, arms pinned to his back, face shoved into the crook of the couch by an unmoving hand.

It’s a sight Vergil doubts he will forget, and he is glad for his leather pants which hides his hard-on.

“I won’t be so quick to give in next time, brother,” Dante says, after he recovers from a chain of sneezes that rocks his whole body. “So why don’t you practice asking nicely; finally start acting like the well-adjusted adults we are.”

Dante’s little joke does not go unappreciated. Vergil gifts him with a bruise on his shoulder that should be felt for at least half an hour.

They place themselves by their respective ends of the couch to lift it up, and they don’t have to walk far until a suitable location is found to deposit the unwieldy object; the crumbled remains of what was once a barber. It gives one last creak when they drop it, and Dante stares at it as if pulled by some invisible force, his face closed up with an unreadable expression. Vergil doesn’t say anything, just folds his hands behind his back and listens to the distant rattling of windows from an empty house.

“Come on,” Dante says, subdued. 

Vergil follows. Before long, the scrawled letters of the neon sign comes into view.

“Devil May Cry,” Vergil states.

“Stupid name, I know,” says Dante. “That’s what happens when you let a name you cook up in your late teens stick.”

Vergil tilts his head and looks at Dante from the corner of his eye. “What ever possessed you to come up with such a name.”

Dante snorts through his nose. He swings his arms and kicks at a piece of rubble.

_ Crack. _

It crumbles into small fragments upon hitting a wall. “Let’s see. Crazy teen, drunk on too much _ AC/DC _and whiskey.” He kicks a second rock. The sound of its impact reverberates clean through empty buildings. “It’s surreal you know. To think that I was like that, once. I’ll bet good money that you were worse. Still waters and all that. But hey, what do I know?”

_ Crack. _

“More than I ever had,” says Vergil, more to himself. This time, the rock dissolves into powder from the sheer force of the kick. He continues before Dante’s frown can form itself into a question. “The name must’ve held some significance for you to have kept it for so long,” says Vergil. He observes how the lines of Dante’s shoulder draw tighter with each word. “Am I wrong?”

Dante makes a sharp turn with a snap of his coat, and Vergil stops himself just in time to avoid colliding with the man.

“What’s it to you? You fuck off out of my life for twenty-four years and suddenly act like you care? Shit doesn’t work that way, Vergil.”

Dante’s abrupt anger folds out of him like a compressed balloon. The memory is tender and raw, as Vergil had suspected. They are walking wounds, the both of them; of the kind no devil can heal. He is still waiting to see if they can scab over. Knit back into a scar.

“Dante,” he says, and his brother flinches from the name. He reaches for Dante’s hand, which starts under his touch— but he resolutely tries again, and it holds this time. “Listen close, brother; and know that there’s nothing to gain from denying what I’m about to say.” 

No need for demonic towers, not any more. Vergil will simply tell the truth.

“You claim that I’ve never cared,” he says, quiet. “You misunderstand me by assuming so; for you’ve occupied my thoughts so completely that at times, it had been impossible for me to see anything that wasn’t you.”

_ My only weakness_, he would’ve once said, _ and I hated myself for it. _But in a bitter twist of poetic justice that saw him reduced to the very thing he feared, Vergil believes he now understands what it truly means to be weak.

“I don’t intend for you to forgive me for my past transgressions. But do allow me to prove to you that I am no longer the desperate youth you once knew.”

Dante is silent for a long moment. His eyes flickers as he studies him. His grip loosens, and Vergil lets go of his hand, already uncomfortably damp with sweat. 

“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Vergil,” Dante says at last. “You being here is enough.”

Vergil breathes out. Deep, almost like a sigh. “I understand.”

Dante smartly steps out of his space and unlocks the door, swearing under his breath when he keeps picking the wrong keys for the lock.

Eventually, he shakes his head and lets out a small chuckle. “All that, just to know where this stupid name came from.” Finally— a click comes from the other side. Dante turns to meet his eyes. “You know what, how about I just tell you.”

In typical fashion of his brother, the truth is startling and deeply touching in a way that leaves him speechless for several moments; and by the time he has passed the threshold of the door, his gaze on the world had shifted on its axis ever so slightly. And there, standing at the centre of the room, is Dante.

I.

Vergil wakes with his back pressed to an alcove, a book cradled in his hands and his body warmed by the steady stream of a mid-afternoon sun. He realises, with dazed incredulity, that his sleeping habits have become no better than Dante’s. It had started out from a need to wake to the burn of daylight on his eyelids rather than the stifled darkness of his guest room, which had eventually devolved into catching handfuls of sleep whenever he could.

Vergil pops his stiff joints and slicks his hair back, taking a moment to gather himself. _ He is in Dante’s office. The Yamato is here. The demonic pull is Dante, and— _

_ The kitchen is in use_. This is unusual in itself, but what surprises him more is how appetising the smell is. He gently folds the book away and makes his way over to the kitchen, and even now, he marvels over the sensation of the strengthening pull of his brother’s demonic energy, no less novel after their first months together.

“Omelettes,” Vergil observes. 

His voice is soft, but it cuts through the kitchen with ease. Dante shoots up like a rocket, relaxing when he turns to see Vergil.

“Shit, Vergil. I thought you were above stating the obvious.”

Had Dante been wearing the same shirt over this past week? Vergil ghosts over to stand by his side. The man barely acknowledges his presence, frowning with an indrawn cheek that could only mean he’s biting it. Vergil considers making a scathing remark about the nature of his omelettes that would require such devotion and intensity in concentration, but recalling Dante’s snap reaction, he decides to let it go. 

“Consider me pleasantly surprised,” he drawls instead. “I was under the impression that your diet consisted purely of microwaved pizza, and on the brave occasion, cold pizza.”

Dante snorts. “You’re just pissed that there’s something I can do that you can’t.” He flicks his wrist and neatly flips the omelette over. “We all have our unique strengths, brother. Fighting me and your son ain’t one of them, though.” Dante’s smile is rakish. “Consider taking up knitting, why don’t you. It involves pointy things. I’m sure you’ll like it.”

Vergil’s mouth twitches. “Perhaps I will. I’ll knit you a respectable sweater to bury your body with.”

Dante whistles. “Must’ve hit a nerve. You’re usually more subtle than that.”

Vergil decides he’ll put a lid to their petty bickering then and there with a disinterested _ hum_. He peels himself away from Dante and, on a whim, makes his way to the fridge to inspect its contents

A quick glance finds it severely lacking. Nero had recently checked in on them with an armful of perishables _ (“now that your brother’s here, this is the last time I’m cleaning up after you, old man”), _but the shelves are littered with half-eaten canned fruit, with beer cans outnumbering food that could be considered edible. He doesn’t need to check the freezer to know that it is filled to the brim with pizza.

_ Truly the fridge of a seasoned chef_, Vergil thinks, dryly.

“Shut it, Vergil.”

“Pardon?”

“You were gonna say something nasty. Call it a twin’s intuition. Twintuition,” Dante adds, and chuckles at his own joke, because of course that was just the kind of man he was.

Amused, and against his better instincts, fond— Vergil wonders how a man like his brother had survived on the surface for so long. 

_ Only just_, answers back a small, still part of his mind. With V’s first impression of the office flooding his senses against his will, the unexpected turn of his thoughts catches Vergil off-guard. With some difficulty, he folds the memory away to think on later.

“Regardless, I foresee a trip out of town for supplies.”

“Fine, whatever.” Dante flips the omelette once more with unnecessary finesse, prompting Vergil to briefly consider the merits of the frying pan as a weapon. “You wanna take the Cavaliere out this time? Bet she’d suit you.”

“I’ve... yet to earn her respect,” Vergil admits, with some reluctance.

“Guess that makes sense,” Dante says, “you were never that good with the ladies. Me, on the other hand—”

“Sound and fury. Spare yourself the effort and give up while you’re at it.” 

Dante pauses from his cooking to look Vergil over with a too-knowing smile that warms him despite his best efforts. “Can’t believe I almost forgot how prissy you get when you’re jealous. Don’t feel bad, though— it’s kinda cute. Ladies love it. Gentlemen, too.”

Vergil clenches his jaw, and after warring with his conflicting desires, decides that the best course of action would be to deny it the grace of an answer.

Dante, on his part, does a decent impression of blissful ignorance. “Hey— while you’re there. Pass me the pepper shaker, won’t you?”

His voice is as sweet and artificial as the sundaes he so adores. Vergil passes the requested item. To disagree would be a display of childish petulance.

“Thanks,” Dante drawls, brazen enough to throw out a wink on top of it. He reaches out, worn fingers wrapping around Vergil’s own with an ease that eschews how much it burns. Vergil pays it no mind. He has endured far worse.

Instead, he watches in pointed silence as a frown breaks over his brother’s face.

“What’s the matter,” he says. He knows he’s showing entirely too many teeth for it to be considered a smile. “Did you need the pepper, or have you changed your mind?”

Dante’s grip on the shaker is firm— but so is his. No amount of struggle on Dante’s part will prompt him to let go of it.

“Take it, Dante. It’s all yours.”

The kitchen is silent save for the gentle sizzle of eggs in oil. 

"Spoil me with your kindness, why don't you," Dante grits out.

They stare each other down, an unmovable object against an unstoppable force. Sometimes Vergil is one. Other times he is the other. Dante’s grip tightens until Vergil fancies that if Dante were to take his hand away, he will see the fine traces of his palm imprinted onto his own hand. This is an impossibility, of course, for the sons of Sparda. But oh, have they tried. How Vergil wishes he could try. 

Dante tenses a fraction, then he pulls a predictable trick; he loosens his muscles as if to give up on it, then yanks the shaker back last minute. 

Vergil doesn’t resist against it. He encourages it, in fact, such that Dante is drawing back with more force than needed, causing him to knock his head against the cupboard with a loud crack. Vergil steadies himself by placing his hands against the kitchen counter on either side of Dante, and he can’t stop the smirk that unfolds out of him— but when Dante recovers, his brother is mirroring his expression, too.

“Score for Dante,” he says, and he holds up the pepper shaker. 

For a moment, Dante’s triumphant smile is enough to smooth away his frown lines and soften the bags under his eyes, and Vergil leans forward, as if to bask under it.

_ Longing_, he thinks, as he reflects on the sudden seizing in his chest. This is longing. And suddenly, he is twelve again and alone and lost with nothing but the cold weight of the Yamato to keep him safe at night.

Vergil breathes out. “Was it worth it, brother.”

His breath unsettles some of Dante’s fringe out of his eyes. Dante’s gaze flickers away from him, and he puts the shaker down, gently. “Not sure,” Dante says, then clears his throat. Inelegant splotches of red begin to stain his neck. “Jury’s still out on that one.”

Vergil removes a hand from the counter and thumbs at a striking spot of red that blossoms above Dante’s collarbone. The skin jumps beneath his fingers, but Dante doesn’t move away, so he presses a little harder.

“Perhaps a little more convincing is required.”

Vergil moves his hand up, this time to place his thumb against an artery by his neck. Here, the rapid butterfly-pulse is striking, travelling through his fingers to hum through his own body.

Vergil holds no illusions of his own selfishness, nor of his need to outperform at any given chance. 

He tightens his hold, leans forward, and kisses Dante. 

Vergil’s never kissed anyone in earnest, not like this. And when Dante shudders beneath him and does a poor job in concealing the fact that he’s rocking against Vergil’s thigh, he wonders how long it had been since his brother’s let anyone touch him like this, too.

They find a rhythm, then lose it in their haste. They tilt their heads to the same side and knock teeth in trying to deepen their kiss, and Dante giggles against his mouth and says, “this is probably the least stylish kiss anybody’s ever done.”

Vergil fists his hand in Dante’s hair to keep him in place and shuts him up by sliding a tongue through his lips, shivering when he feels Dante’s eagerly brush against his own. Finally, _ finally_, Dante settles with something that’s between a sigh and a whine, wrapping hands around him that explores his back and up and over to his chest, then back again.

Their rhythm keeps this time.

“I couldn’t, you know,” Dante says between breaths, “not after all this time. I’d see someone and think— _ maybe, _ but they’d turn around and say the wrong thing or laugh the wrong way and—”

The implications of this is staggering, though Vergil's mind is in no state to process it. _ I’m here_, he tries to impart with his hands, his mouth, his warmth, _ we’re here. _

Dante’s hands, in turn, leave a burning trail on his skin. His need to get closer has him practically lift Dante onto the kitchen counter, and Dante responds by wrapping his legs around his torso, pressed until they can feel the cascade of every nerve— and it’s altogether too much and not enough, for a body that had largely been nothing but a vessel to act out the plans of his or an external consciousness. 

So when Dante freezes beneath him, it takes his kiss-slowed mind a second to register just what has happened. He pulls back with an air of disorientation, watching his brother with glazed eyes.

“Something’s burning,” Dante says, panic etched on his face. Then—

“Shit, _ shit, _the omelettes—”

The burnt smell is so pungent that Vergil chides himself for not noticing it earlier. The omelettes themselves are unsalvageable, left to become a charred, blackened mess. Standing by it is Dante with the imperceptible slope in his shoulders, precariously still and taken by an uncharacteristic silence. The sight sends a knife through Vergil’s chest, slow and twisting, spreading to the tips of his fingers. 

He wordlessly takes Dante’s hand and pulls his attention away from the scene by brushing his lips against his knuckles; and by the time he’s open-mouthed kissing his palm and scraping his teeth against it, Dante’s eyes have dilated to a ring of hungry blue. 

_ Curious_, he thinks, how such a simple act could have such a marked effect.

“How do you like the idea of dining out tonight, little brother.”

“Only if—” Dante’s breath hitches when Vergil very deliberately catches his index finger into his mouth, “only if you’re paying.”

“Of course,” Vergil says, for it’s the least he can do. He presses one last kiss to the palm and lets it go. “It’s decided, then.”

Dante’s answering smile is slow and warm.

_ We’re here_. Vergil reminds himself once again, against his lightheadedness. We’re here.

**Author's Note:**

> listen, I'm still hollering over the fact that Vergil's title is _the alpha and the omega_. DMCV is truly a gift.


End file.
